Booking and details
Reserve Your SpotDates Sun, Dec 13, 2026, 1pm
Venue Stuart and Mimi Rose Rare Book and Manuscript Exhibition Hall
Tickets Free; registration recommended
Duration 30 minutes
In June 1953, a young Toni Morrison stepped onto the stage as Shakespeare’s Queen Elizabeth in the Howard University Players production of Richard III. Her experience in the Howard Players likely influenced her later artistic and intellectual life as a critically acclaimed novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Explore the history of the Howard Players’ Shakespearean productions and Toni Morrison’s experience with Shakespeare with Dalton Greene in To Hear Her Speak: Black Women and Shakespeare.
About the exhibition
Curated by Dr. Patricia Akhimie, To Hear Her Speak: Black Women and Shakespeare offers the first comprehensive history of Black women and Shakespeare, exploring their presence in the early modern world and their engagement with Shakespeare both on and off the stage over the course of more than four centuries.
About the speaker
Dalton Greene (he/him) is a PhD student in English at the University of Maryland. His research interests include Shakespeare and other early modern drama, premodern critical race and disability studies, and histories of performance and reception. His work has been supported by the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Fulbright Foundation in Greece. In addition to this research, he is committed to exploring inclusive, equitable pedagogies and digital and public-facing methods for humanities scholarship.
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